Made it to 50 fights without loss, and the first level of Trapper in the same fight. I haven't gone for Trapper before but I thought it would be good for a Mage. With level 2 Distortion, Intellect of 15 and Destruction 1, plus the 25% bonus for the first Trapper medal, my traps are doing 560-840 damage. Not bad for level 11.

I got my leadership up to 3800 by this stage, but I've got a bit of a problem with proceeding now. I've been around the first four islands but I haven't got the Verona map yet. Presumably the easiest guardian is the one on Scarlet Wind, but he's got about 50 Assassins and my Resurrection power is puny with only 7 Paladins and 28 Inquisitors. I find that against Assassins my units are often pinned to the back of the map so that the Assassins can't use their backstab ability. I tried to kite one of the maps on Bolo or Rusty Anchor but no such luck so far.

Just a tip concerning assassins, if you have flying units what I do is luring them in a trap by flying over one and landing right behind it, so the unit will stand with its back towards the trap, this way the joke is on the assa's when they try to backstab you, they will take some nice damage and will be pinned down aswell.

Thanks guys, but I managed to win that fight now anyway and luckily it was the Verona map after all. I had to be aware of which direction units would be facing (to keep their backs 'closed' so to speak) and soaked up the damage with the Trolls and the 1 Emerald Dragon. Currently I have a rage pool of 12 , mainly because I've been concentrating on the Magic tree. So I can't even use Mystic Egg yet. Mainly I have been using Mana Accelerator and Trap/Healing. Higher Magic would be really useful right now for this.

But when I got to Verona I saw 3 more Trolls at the first shop on the pier. So that will do me for a tank for up to 8000 leadership.

A lot of sneaking in Verona and Montero has me up to 4600 leadership at level 14, which seems pretty good for a Mage. I have the ridiculous stats of 3 Attack, 5 Defense and 26 Intellect! Just got Distortion 3, and already have Destroyer 1 and Higher Magic 1.

Team consists of:

4 Trolls
21 Paladins
21 Archmages
70 Royal Snakes
46 Inquisitors

This seems to me to be close to the perfect team at the moment. I found Target early so I can use it on the Trolls (and at night especially this tactic is nearly unstoppable with their regeneration). The Snakes are for striking, Paladins for support resurrection, Archmages for Magic Shield/attack and Inquisitors mainly to generate rage for Mana Accelerator.

I am especially pleased to have Trap up to 1200-1800 damage, which at this early stage ought to do a lot of killing on Rusty Anchor (which I haven't touched yet). I've got the elf follower already and two of those dresses that can upgrade to Magess' dresses (not strong enough yet though) so I can see me having an Intellect of well over 30 by mid game and maybe closer to 40.

Well, it has been quite difficult through to about 130 fights. The period between about 60-140 fights seemed to be the hardest in my Warrior game, and it's even more so here as a Mage. But I can see that soon the game will be a lot easier and by level 40 the Mage will probably be stronger overall.

Two Dresses of the Magess' really helped to boost Intellect and leadership, and so now I am up to about 10,000 leadership at level 27. I have the Dead Skull down to 12% and Intellect already at 38, so I think about 45 or even 50 will be the final Intellect. With Higher Magic and Destroyer, I think I am going to kick ass toward the end of the game.

I also finally got my Trapper 3 medal, so that's really useful. 4000 damage per Trap. What I really need now is to kill the paladin with the Inquisitor's Sword as I have the other two items for the set. This will have a double whammy effect - the Inquisitor Sword allows for 20% more Inquisitors and Paladins, and the set gives +3 morale to all humans! So I have waved goodbye to my beloved Royal Snakes in favour of Giants at the moment, but eventually I will go for Horsemen instead.

Just had the longest and in the end most successful and satisfying fight I can remember in all my KB playing. I had just ticked over to level 40 but Elenhel didn't challenge me straight away (he must have a chance to challenge after every subsequent fight?). So I fought Demenion's castle for the stone and THEN Elenhel attacked. I was starting the fight with about 20 mana but I really didn't want to have to reload and replay the Demenion fight, so I gave it a try.

I had heard that Elenhel loves to spam level 3 Geyser but at first he seemed to be using Call of Nature instead, which is a terrible choice for 40 mana and gives something like 150 Red Snakes or something. But Elenhel did start using Geyser after a while and I took a great deal of damage from his units. The Inquisitors especially took a hammering and at one stage I was down to 11 of them! I really should have used Target more.

Anyway, I just about managed to keep the Inquisitors alive, and I was down to about 20 Horsemen and maybe 40 Knights. I could win the fight, but with no losses?

So I left one Necromancer alive and started the arduous task of trying to regenerate health/mana/rage. I started off by Phantoming level 1 Inquisitors (15 mana) as I planned on regenerating my mana/rage that way (I have 25 for 25 Mana Accelerator). After a while I realised that this wasn't going to work, at least not for hundreds of turns. I was about to give up when I thought about Magic Spring again. But how could I make it effective without using Target?

Then I had a revelation. The 1 Necromancer does an area attack for maybe 5 damage per hex, so if I clustered my units together and cast Magic Spring on the middle stack, the Necromancer would always hit it! By trial and error I discovered that level 2 Magic Spring was the most effective - costing 7 mana, it generates 15 mana over three turns. So I was gaining 8 mana every 3 turns, which meant that over time I could generate enough to Phantom Paladin my troops back to full health.

Good work I remember doing something like that in my game. His geysers are simply way too ridiculous damage-wise, but that is to be expected with his 40+ intellect. As for call of nature, I was really happy to see him use it - if he went geysering from turn 1, I would have been left with a single paladin stack in the end...

Done! The game was a breeze after level 40 - this is where the Mage ends up being more powerful than the Warrior, IMO. I had four Flaming Eyes scrolls so I saved them up for Zigaldis, the big lizard whose name I've forgotten, and Bhaal. Also plenty of other Wandering scrolls to give me ridiculous stats of 35 Attack, 33 Defense and 60 Intellect for the last few battles. I managed to get my leadership up to 32,000 with Flaming Eyes, which is much lower than the 47,000 I had for with the Warrior.

But it didn't matter. Against Bhaal, my spellbook usage was Haste + Geyser in turn 1, then Stone Skin x 2 on turn 2, followed by more Stone Skin, Divine Armor, Magic Shield and Geysers when Bhaal brought more demons across. I managed to screw up my first try at this though - you really do need to preserve a stack of Scoffer Imps if you can for the long resurrection. On my second try, I was preserving a stack of Scoffers until Bill Gilbert's Archers shot them just before they flew off the burning ledge.

I was so annoyed and I thought I would have to start again. After killing Bhaal all there was left was 7 Demons, so I tried without much luck to run around the map having slowed the Demons, trying to resurrect. It wasn't working. Then the Demons spawned 11 Scoffer Imps, and I've never been happier to see those Imps in my life! Killed the Demons and used Calm Rage to stock up on Mana for Resurrection. No problem - zero losses.

In general I found the Mage quite a bit harder in the earlier stages. You really have serious leadership issues on Impossible as a Mage, and it's not until past level 45 that you've really reached your full potential as a spellcaster. I just smashed my way through Elon and Reha with Geyser, which is insanely powerful when you have 50 Intellect. (About 5000-6000 damage x 8 stacks)

I just improved on my score by about 25 or so, but it's still in the 1400s as I took until day 28 again. I just can't keep the time down. That's the one thing I can't do with this game.

I was surprised to see that Archmages did the most damage, 22.5% This is because of the two Dresses of the Magess I had, which must be the best item in the game for a Mage. +4 Intellect, +800 leadership and +30% Critical chance for Archmages is insanely good. Two of them were enough that the Archmages ended up with a 95% Critical chance.

Oh well, it's been fun but it's really time for a break from KB:AP. I've been playing this so much over the last month it's caused marital stress. My wife is not happy. But I've had more fun playing the King's Bounty series over the past 15 months than I've had with any other game in the past ten years

And I literally mean that. I never thought anything would top Master of Orion 1 + 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 for me, but King's Bounty is just as good as those great games of the past.